I just ran across the following quote, attributed primarily to Malcolm Forbes:
“You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.”
A good sentiment, but I’ll suggest that the person of the highest character realizes that everyone can do something for us. But we must be open to that idea.
Google’s SVP of HR, Lazlo Block, has revealed that the infamous Google interview questions were a bunch of hooey after all. Turns out when decide to play “stump the interviewee” you’re just stroking your own ego. Further, what type of leader are you when you spend your time trying to belittle people and pressure them with those types of questions?
Not somebody I’d ever work for, that’s for sure.
But more importantly, the trick questions are the wrong types of questions. You can prepare for those questions and answer them “correctly” by showing a plausible logical approach to the question. When asked, the candidate spews back out the right algorithm to solve the problem. That’s great. They can prepare and are pretty logical.
But it’s not enough.
Instead, ask them what will happen if their boss tells them to do something just slightly unethical. Or other questions that test their emotional quotient (EQ) instead of just their IQ. How do they react to other people and their feelings?
The biggest problem we have in many companies today is not that we can’t find enough smart people. It’s that we can’t find enough smart people who know how to work with people. Find leaders who realize this and you’ll have the chance to win.
“To live according to God is to love” said Saint Francis de Sales.
My friend Kim Rumsmoke Kashian demonstrated that love every time she talked with her family and friends, always closing with “love ya!” I asked her why she did this when, at the end of a conversation, she said it to me. Followed by “well, I’m waiting…”
She said we’d never know when it would be the last time we’d see or talk with our friends. It was important to let people know that you loved and appreciated them. Kim wasn’t afraid of sharing her love with us. Even if you heard it from her and said it to her a hundred times, you knew how that hundred and first conversation was going to end.
“Love ya!”
What a tremendous gift she gave us to remember her by! Those two simple words that she repeated many times. I’ll never be able to read or hear “love ya!” without hearing her voice, remembering her laugh and smile and her spirit.
When we share our love for each other, and particularly with her family in the coming months and years, we are remembering Kim. And it’s so easy to do.
I’ll see you again buddy.
“Love ya!”
P.S. If you don’t know who Kim Kashian is, watch this. A remarkable woman and friend. She begins speaking at 3:03.
As I write this, I’m relaxing while sitting in a nice NASCAR-themed restaurant in the Charlotte airport having a beer, catching up on email and listening to “Gimme Shelter” by the Rolling Stones.
Fifteen minutes ago the outcome could have been different but not, perhaps, better. I’m en route to San Francisco this afternoon and ended up here by accident, when my original flights were delayed and the surprisingly nice USAir agents kindly rerouted me through Charlotte. Since I arrived here early, I wondered if I could get on the 4:40 flight instead of the 6:10.
I went to the USAir customer service desk and inquired about jumping the earlier flight. However, before I got there I thought it through. If I could get out to San Francisco earlier for free, I’d do it. If it was inconvenient or cost more money, I wouldn’t.
It turns out that the change fee would have been $75 and I would have had to sit in a middle seat. Now, had I selected that option I know I would have been miserable. I hate flying anyway and being crammed into a middle seat on a cross-country flight isn’t something I look forward to. In addition, I would have spent the whole evening thinking “I spent another $75 for this?” Then, I would have landed and gone to the hotel only to find myself too tired to go out to eat and paying extra money for mediocre hotel food.
It would have made my 30 hours on the ground in San Francisco, a city I really like, totally horrible.
Instead, I’ve saved $75, gained a couple of hours to do a bit of work and had a beer and some decent pork BBQ sliders. Definitely a win.
But what would have happened had I not considered that original decision heuristic before talking to the agent? Is it possible I would have said “sure” and jumped on the $75, middle seat hell ride? I think I may have.
So it looks like I’ve made the perfectly rational decision then. After all, I’m perfectly happy with the outcome and happy enough to write this post. But the outcome I’m living right now is just one of many possible outcomes. Am I just convincing myself that hanging around in the airport for an extra hour and thirty minutes is better than the alternative?
Perhaps I’ve been reading too much on behavioral economics. However, from today’s unplanned observations, it seems to me like a way to be happier with your decisions–even spur-of-the-moment ones–is to take at least a minute or two to consider a couple of different outcomes and think about which one is more palatable to you. It makes it more likely that the path you do take, even if the outcome is slightly sub-obtimal, will still be enjoyable to you.
Plus, they’re playing Elvis Costello on the restaurant PA system, so this must be the place for me!
One of the Magnificent Eleven. Photographer Robert Capra landed at Omaha along with the second wave and took 106 photos, of which only 11 survived a photo lab processing accident.
First things first.
At 0016 hours today, the Horsas began to crash-land near the Caen Canal in Normandy, France. The liberation of Europe was under way.
Over 24,000 young men jumped from planes or landed in gliders to support the 160,000 men who waded ashore. They were not veterans of combat. They did not consider themselves heroes. They were there to do the job of freeing Europe from tyranny.
The stories of their heroism are well documented, yet increasingly forgotten. It is likely that you will see nothing of today’s importance from the mainstream media as you check the news this morning because it happened 69 years ago.
We should never forget their sacrifices. I won’t. Today is D-Day.
Frank E. Gannett Memorial Library, Utica College
Articles about the value of a college education are not in short supply currently. The cost of a university degree continues to increase and opportunities for recent college graduates remain limited with the continuing economic challenges. It’s not surprising that columns and blogs in Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, among other publications, either question the value of higher education entirely or value education in purely economic terms.
Even educators are reflecting on the value of college. As you might expect, this is being done in a more thoughtful fashion than in the mainstream media. A recent Chronicle of Higher Education article titled How to Assess the Real Payoff of a College Degree discusses the issue at length and is worth a read, as is the commentary What Is College For?
My belief is that when we try to assess the value of a college education and look at it only in terms of dollars and cents, or in preparation for a particular job, we cheapen the discourse on the topic. It certainly is important that we leave university with a set of skills that can contribute to gainful employment. And, given that we spend a tremendous amount of money and time on education, we should be looking to get the most from our investment.
But the true value of education doesn’t lie in how much money we make or how fast we climb the corporate ladder. The value is in our preparation for life and all the obstacles that we have to overcome.
We will be faced with career changes, technology shifts, economic turmoil, health and family decisions and more throughout our lives. None of these are predictable and the path each of us face is different and our own. Unlike repairing a leaky faucet or baking cake, there’s not a single recipe for life that we can follow. We have to write our own cookbook at the very least. Some of us will face challenges that are the equivalent of building our own printing press and making the paper and ink on which to print our cookbook.
I’ve often said that the most important thing I learned at Utica College was how to think. During those three and half years I was able to calm my mind and exercise it in a way that I’d never done before. I interacted with others who had very different and, at the time, frightening ideas. I learned how to evaluate and test existing ideas and how to create new ones of my own. Sure, I received a B.S. degree, but I value my thinking ability infinitely more.
Over the years, I’ve been able to use that vast toolkit to build a life. I’ve zigged and zagged through multiple industries, different types of jobs, and had some very good and very bad ideas. I’ve been extremely fortunate, financially and personally, because of the cognitive abilities I took the time to hone at UC.
I’m not saying that higher education doesn’t have challenges in terms of cost containment and always trying to do better in the toolkits we provide to our students. We must strive every day to get better and insist on openness and accountability. But, most of all, we should remember and hold our institutions of higher education accountable for preparing our students to be lifelong learners and leaders.
The value of a college degree is that, undertaken properly, it prepares us for life. As we discuss the value of a college education, let’s make sure we look at the entirety of the college experience and not just use a balance sheet mentality.
5/15/13 Update: In the original post I neglected to thank Dr. Todd Hutton and Kim Lambert of Utica College who brought my attention to the Chronicle pieces referenced above and inspired this piece.
Full disclosure: I am a trustee of Utica College and naturally biased in favor of higher education
I’m a fan of Maker’s Mark bourbon and usually drink the stuff mixed with Diet Coke, so I wasn’t terribly upset when I heard they were lowering the alcohol volume to 84 proof from 90. I’d never notice the difference. Given the variability of the Diet Coke pour and the quantity of ice, the proportion of bourbon in any glass I have probably varies by 20% anyway.
I also thought this whole thing was just a PR move, and a poor one at that, because it’s so transparent. There’s no way a small distillery, using a family secret recipe, would allow the product quality to be damaged. You’d have to be a dim bulb to mess with the unique selling proposition. Further, if you can water down the product and grow (not maintain) sales volume, then you reveal to your customers that the thing they purchased wasn’t what it purported to be. Why would a small company, which should know better, do this?
After reading an article today, I learned that Maker’s Mark isn’t actually a small distillery. The brand is owned by Beam Inc., a $2.5 billion sales distillery company that features its stock price on the website. Uh oh.
Turns out, Beam probably was really considering watering down the product. And if nobody noticed, the death spiral starts. Cheaper ingredients, more adulterants added, maybe even fake wax to replace the iconic bottle seal. The customers would complain and then move to something else. And Beam Inc. would simply transfer the marketing budget to another brand, and not even notice.
Wouldn’t it just be easier to continue making a quality product that customers like and, when demand gets ahead of supply, let the market iron out the problem with a temporary increase to the price? But then what would the bean counters have to do?
Don’t let your MBAs mess with bourbon.
Citigroup posted fourth quarter 2012 results of $1.2 billion in net income, $0.38 per diluted share. This compared with net income of $956 million or $0.31 per diluted share in fourth quarter 2011.
Congratulations to the hard-working Citi employees who delivered that strong performance. The nights, weekends, and holidays away from families and friends were worth it.
Or maybe not. In Q4, Citi announced the layoffs of 11,000 people. Slackers all? Doubtful. Citi decided to generate more profit by balancing the books on the back of the very people that brought them the results.
No wonder these large companies have ethical lapses that, in the case of Citi, resulted in a $476 billion bailout. Why bother doing the right thing when the reward is a pink slip?
How many of those people carried the company to their own Golgotha? Are you doing the same?
This is the time of the year when people begin to come and go from companies. Sometimes willingly, sometimes not.
It’s a good time for a reminder from my fellow Utica College Board member Gary Kunath, who reminds us what we are to our companies.
“The truth is that you are a shark tooth. Don’t ever forget that. Sharks have many rows of teeth and when one tooth falls out, the tooth behind it simply pops into place and replaces it. The shark doesn’t even know it lost a tooth. I hate to say it, but that’s what people are to an organization. When you leave, someone simply pops up in your place and soon no one even knows you are gone. Giving your life to the company and not to your family is crazy. Never, ever put your job or work before family.” Gary Kunath, “Life…Don’t Miss It. I Almost Did.“
How much time will you take from your family this year and give to your company? Why?
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 11,000 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 18 years to get that many views.
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